The ‘realo’ vs. ‘fundi’ debate rarely gets resolved

The dominant parties get so many votes because they’re careful to be attuned to mainstream ideas that don’t stray too far from the approximate center of the universe of popular discourse. In this country the Democrats stake out a position a little to the left of the establishmentarian center and the Republicans stake out a position a little to the right.

A party like the Green Party gets formed in order to present alternative ideas. And then the inevitable debate begins: If the full alternative vision is too radical, the party is likely to get consigned to the margins. Efforts to mainstreamize the vision could enable the party to become a more significant force, but at the expense of distinctive differentiation.

When the German Greens had these kinds of debates during the 1980s the radicals were called ‘fundis’ (fundamentalists) and the mainstreamizers were called ‘realos’ (realists).

Where a person aligns in such a debate tends to be a dispositional thing. Anyway, almost invariably, realo types win out. That’s because marginalism is bleak and lonely.

Nonetheless, the debate never goes away and rarely gets fully resolved:

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http://bostonreview.net/arts-society/stephen-milder-petra-kelly

Elections to the German Bundestag are scheduled for September, and if the polls are accurate, the Greens will become the parliament’s second strongest party. But rather than ecological reorganization or an end to economic thinking, the party now advocates, as the Green vice-mayor of Munich recently put it, not only “a good climate for the economy, but also an economy that is good for the climate.” Speculation that the Greens will join the conservative Christian Democrats in a coalition government after the upcoming election epitomizes the sweeping changes that the party has undergone since its founding.

Political scientists have told the story of the German Greens as one of professionalization and adaptation to the customs and procedures of the political establishment. Some evaluate this process positively, arguing, as Andrei S. Markovits does, that “the Greens have successfully institutionalized in Germany’s mainstream a brand of progressive politics that” in the 1980s “was at best a fringe occurrence.” Others deride the Greens for jettisoning their radical past in order not only to join, but actually reinforce, the establishment.

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Such is inevitable. Ideally, realos and fundis would recognize that and try to optimize the balance. Easier said than done.